1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to mobile terminals, and more particularly, to transmitting emergency calls in mobile terminals.
2. Description of the Related Art
In line with the improvement in technology, mobile terminals such as smart phones implemented with a touch screen now offer a more variety of features such as multimedia players, E-book readers, document editors, and game consoles.
Many different screen lock features have been applied to mobile terminals to prevent the touch screen from being activated during the standby state of the mobile terminals. The screen lock features such as slide unlock and pattern unlock may prevent the touch screen from being unintentionally unlocked due to the accidental slide or pattern input.
These screen lock features may advantageously prevent unintended activations, but may also serve as an obstacle in quickly manipulating the mobile terminals for use because it takes some time or retry to unlock. This is undesirable when a user in an accident needs to quickly place an emergency call.
In order to relieve the discomfort of the conventional screen lock features, some new features have been offered, by which users may make emergency calls without unlocking the touch screen even in a screen-locked state, and these features may be implemented using a separate button dedicated for executing the emergency calls.
The currently available features for transmitting emergency calls may advantageously allow users to quickly place emergency calls without unlocking the touch screen. However, these features are only limited to specific numbers, such as 911 for rescue authorities managed by the government or the government agencies.
Sometimes, in addition to 911 for rescue authorities, the users may need to make emergency calls to other individuals such as their parents or doctors in case of emergency.
Therefore, there is a need for a new method and apparatus for transmitting emergency calls to user-set separate contacts (e.g., parents or doctor) in addition to the general emergency contacts such 911 when the terminal is in the screen-locked state.